Howard Chiang
Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Howard Chiang
Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Howard Chiang is a historian of modern East Asian thought and culture, with a particular emphasis on the critical study of science, medicine, race, gender, and sexuality. With a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University, he currently holds the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is also Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies (by appointment), Professor of History and Feminist Studies (by courtesy), and Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies.
Chiang is among the pioneers of the field of Sinophone studies, which reconceives regions such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Asian America, where the category of “Chinese” fails to capture the complexity and diversity of cultural expression.
Chiang’s first book, After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018), analyzes the history of sex change in China. In 2019, the book received the International Convention of Asia Scholars Best Book in the Humanities Prize and in 2020 it won the Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. His second book, Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2021), proposes a new paradigm for doing transgender history in which geopolitics assumes central importance. This book won the 2022 Bullough Book Award, received the 2022 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award Honorable Mention in LGBTQ Literary and Cultural Studies, and was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies.
The Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History, a reference book offering a global perspective on LGBTQ history edited by Chiang, won the Dartmouth Medal for Excellence in Reference in 2020.
Between 2019 and 2022, he served as the Founding Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies. He edits the “Critical Perspectives on Taiwan” book series from Columbia University Press and the “Global Queer Asias” book series from the University of Michigan Press.
